On 11/13/18 2:55 PM, Paul wrote:

I am very confused about these digital licenses. Where are they stored?

When you first installed windows 10, it transmitted
the NIC (Network Interface Card) MAC address to Microsoft.com .

The second time you install windows 10, the installer
sends the MAC address again. The Microsoft activation
server looks it up, and says "I've seen this machine
before and he's a Windows 10 Pro user". The OS is then
activated.

Are you sure that only the MAC address is used? I have read that it is a
combination of the MAC address, the CPU Serial#, and the boot drive Serial#.

If you changed the motherboard, the MAC address is now
different. Your activation is lost. If you signed into
the previous OS with a MSA (MicroSoftAccount), then you
can contact Microsoft and have the license transferred.
Nobody knows how this works (we have no reports).

If you never paid for Windows 10, then the following
"generic, useless" license keys are provided. I'm quite used
to seeing 3V66T for example. If you enter these in a license
key box, the OS will laugh at you. That's because all the
upgrade machines (7,8.1==10) use these. If you *buy*
a license, then you get a unique key.

VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T (Windows 10 Professional)
YTMG3-N6DKC-DKB77-7M9GH-8HVX7 (Windows 10 Home - multi language)
BT79Q-G7N6G-PGBYW-4YWX6-6F4BT (Windows 10 Home - single language)

So if you got a brand new computer from Costco, say a
Linux computer that didn't have windows, and you entered
the 3V66T, that would not serve to activate the OS.
The installer will look up the MAC address, and find the
MAC address has never been seen by the Microsoft activation
server. You would then go to the store and spend $150
for a license key or whatever.

The "hardware hash" of your computer identifiers, is how
the activation server knows you used a qualifying Windows 7
or Windows 8.1 during the qualifying period. For people who
purchased their Windows 10 the regular way, the regular
rules apply. For people who got Windows 10 OEM on their Dell,
the license is in the MSDM table of ACPI tables in the BIOS.
(The SLIC activation table of ACPI tables is no longer used.)
Using Linux, you can dump the MSDM table for a look. Or
Windows tools could dump the key from that table too.

Perce